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Friday, June 8, 2012

Conversations with Indian IT changes from offshore to expertise

We
get used to reading articles about deals being won by big systems integrators.
These companies either provide all the services in a deal or sub contract to a
smaller firm, which hardly gets a mention.

It
is these smaller companies which are interesting because they are highly
specialised in niche areas. These agile companies can respond to market demand
quickly and change their approaches in response.

I
interviewed tier two Indian supplier MindTree a couple of years ago when it was
first targeting UK customers. It came to market with the offer of high end
consultancy skills combined with low cost delivery. Back then it had 80
UK-based staff. The company has been focussed on the mid-market.

I
met the company's UK head Tridip Saha last week and was interested to see how
the company is doing.

Last
year it grew its revenues in Europe by 50%. It now has 130 UK based staff as
well as 1500 dedicated UK support staff in India.

Tridip
told me that there has been a big change in the conversations MindTree is having
with UK customers has changed from being about offshoring to being about
expertise.

When
it comes to expertise MindTree says its "cross court backhand" is
business intelligence and analysis. The main sectors where it is doing business
are retail, financial services and travel and transportation.

Tridip
says every big business has a wealth of data which can provide valuable
insights about business opportunities.

MindTree's
business intelligence (BI) engagements might include the company building a data
warehouse or expanding an existing one followed and creating dashboards for the
business users so they can use information effectively.

He
says 70% of the company's UK customers originally approached it for BI
services.